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In Chile, rescue/recovery efforts are underway to find 17 people who were victims of a plane crash off the island of Robinson Crusoe which was devastated last year by the massive earthquake and tsunami. The plane had attempted to make two landings but was then blown off course and crashed, whereabouts unknown.

We’ve gotten an email from an acquaintance of one of the victims of the accident saying that one of the passengers was carrying an iPhone. The relatives of the crash victim logged into Find My iPhone and were able to isolate the coordinates of the last known whereabouts of the plane before it crashed. That information was then given to the Navy who are using it to coordinate the rescue efforts to find the fuselage. We weren’t able to verify that until this morning when another report came in saying the same thing. Reader Rodrick translated:

Rear Admiral Francisco García-Huidobro explained the founding that
garnered a lot of attention today, and it has to do with an iPhone belonging to
one of the victims of the aereal accident in Juan Fernández, in a beach
in Bahía Carvajal.
The phone signal could be captured thanks to the GPS system, however, water
ended up shutting it down. Nevertheless, García Huidoro explained that they
managed to plot the last position from where the signal was last generated, which
will be made public tomorrow.
Navy Special Forces are expected to go down to the ocean floor and recover the
device on the fifth day of the search. The iPhone is expected to be near the place
where a wheel from the crashed plane was found on Friday.

Not a terribly happy ending but certainly an interesting use of Find My iPhone. Thanks Fyarad.